c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) As a child, Idit Klein celebrated Purim by wearing homemade gowns and tiaras to play the beautiful Queen Esther. She fantasized about how she, like the heroine who dangerously confessed her faith to save her fellow Jews in ancient Persia, could have somehow rescued her relatives from the Holocaust.

Thirty years later, Klein, the director of Keshet, a pro-gay Jewish advocacy group based in Boston, likens Esther’s fearful revelation of her religious faith to the experience of coming out of the closet.

“Purim is really a quintessential coming-out story,” said Klein, now 34. “When I came out, I immediately felt the parallels between the experience and the Esther story. There are wonderful and exciting and obvious parallels to the experience of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.”

The raucous, wine-soaked costume parties associated with Purim (which begins at sundown March 3 this year) commemorate the 2,500-year-old triumph of the Jews over Haman, the prime minister who had ordered them killed. Salvation came only after Esther told the lovestruck king that she also was Jewish.

Many gay Jews see the story as an allegory for coming out sexually as well as spiritually. Some, including Klein, would like to see Purim become a “National Jewish Coming Out Day.”

Purim celebrations, during which even traditional Jews embrace cross-dressing and debauchery, already serve as unofficial gay pride events, said Scott Gansl, past president of the World Congress of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Jews.

“Purim is gay Jewish Halloween,” he said. “Everyone has put on a drag Purim festival, including most straight organizations. It’s a very gender-bending holiday.”

This year, Gansl’s Philadelphia synagogue will perform a silly musical for Purim featuring Beatles parodies. Other Purim parties around the country include parodies of “Dreamgirls” and “The Sopranos,” with costumes and songs that are either mildly or outrageously vulgar.

“We act just as flamboyant as straight groups, but probably in sillier and more focused ways,” Gansl said, barely stifling a laugh as he described how a Pennsylvania synagogue with a large lesbian membership has turned the holiday’s tri-cornered Hamentashen tarts into symbols of female genitalia.

If Purim became widely known as National Jewish Coming Out Day, Gansl said, more synagogues might take the opportunity to welcome gay members, both out and closeted.

Another fan of the idea is Abe Ryback, co-creator of “Pure PolyEsther,” a burlesque show last performed by The Theater Offensive at the Boston Center for the Arts in 1999; it’s tentatively scheduled for a revival in 2009. In the production, Esther’s guardians are a gay couple, and her defiant predecessor, Vashti, is a very different kind of queen _ think drag queen.

Ryback said he wrote the musical as a way to humorously create dialogue about the importance of being true to yourself, whether this means being openly Jewish, openly gay or both.

“Me coming out as queer, as gay, part of the power of being able to do that comes from the Book of Esther,” he said. “It really helps people understand oppression and what it looks like to fight for liberation … from the threat of death or slavery or the closet.”

“Pure PolyEsther’s” revival may tie into Klein’s plans to create a regional movement for Purim as a day to honor gay Jewish rights. In the meantime, Keshet has not planned anything major for Purim, she said, because her organization’s focus is currently on rallying voters around same-sex marriage and starting gay-straight alliances in Jewish schools.

Although Orthodox Judaism remains opposed to all aspects of homosexuality, the other Jewish movements have made great strides in gay rights in the last decade, Gansl said. Gay rabbis and same-sex marriage ceremonies are permitted in the Reconstructionist and Reform movements, and recently in some segments of the Conservative movement.

As acceptance becomes more widespread and their congregations become more diverse, some historically gay synagogues have begun focusing on other aspects of Purim, beyond the “coming out” interpretation.

Rabbi Lisa Edwards of Los Angeles’ Beth Chayim Chadashim, which calls itself the world’s first gay and lesbian synagogue, said her congregation has no need for a National Jewish Coming Out Day. The 35-year-old community holds religious “coming out services” throughout the year, she said, as commonly as bar and bat mitzvahs.

Instead, the synagogue will mark Purim this year as a day to embrace various cultures. The Megillah _ the Scroll of Esther _ will be read in different languages and a Ugandan musician will teach Jewish songs from his country.

“In past years, there’s been more focus on dressing in drag and things like that, but that’s kind of less the official focus now,” Edwards said. “Now it’s the ethnic diversity piece, embracing all of who we are.”

But Klein and Gansl said many gay Jews in less gay-friendly communities remain fearful of coming out, making the Purim story uniquely relevant. Esther’s experience can assure them that some risks are worth taking, Klein said.

“There’s a power and privilege that you can access through passing as straight, but the invisibility also comes at a significant communal and emotional cost,” she said. “The more people are out, the more queer people aren’t viewed as `other’ and `not normal.’ The more it will be obvious that gay people should have the same rights as everybody else.”

KRE END NEROULIAS

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